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1. About WordPress.........................................................................................9
1.1 What WordPress has to offer?..........................................................................................10
1.1.1 Freedom to use customized themes............................................................................................10
1.1.2 Endless custom plugins.....................................................................................................................10
1.1.3 Personalized domain name..............................................................................................................10
1.1.4 Self-liability for maintenance...........................................................................................................11
1.1.5 High monetization potential...........................................................................................................11
1.1.6 SEO............................................................................................................................................................ 12
4. Performance Optimisation....................................................................116
4.1 Why Optimization?..................................................................................................116
4.2 Optimize WordPress Website...............................................................................117
4.2.1 Optimize WordPress Database..........................................................................................117
4.2.2 Optimize Images.....................................................................................................................120
4.2.3 Checklist for Monitoring Performance...........................................................................123
5. SEO Optimisation.............................................................................126
5.1 Unique and Useful Content...................................................................................126
5.2 Optimized Theme....................................................................................................127
5.3 Take help of an SEO Plugin...................................................................................129
5.4 Improve Performance............................................................................................130
5.5 Make Your Website Responsive...........................................................................131
5.6 Social Media Sharing..............................................................................................131
6. Security Optimisation.....................................................................134
6.1 What is WordPress Security Hardening?...........................................................134
6.2 WordPress Security Issues....................................................................................135
6.3 What makes WordPress a target for Hackers?................................................136
6.3.1 WordPress Vulnerabilities....................................................................................................137
6.3.2 Non-targeted automated attacks....................................................................................138
6.3.3 Targeted attacks......................................................................................................................138
6.4 Hardening WordPress Security...........................................................................140
6.4.1 What needs to be protected?............................................................................................140
6.5 Methods for Hardening WordPress Security...................................................140
6.5.1 Easy Methods for DIY Users...............................................................................................141
6.5.2 Advanced WordPress Security Methods.......................................................................145
6.6 Checking if WordPress Site is hacked................................................................151
9. Additional Resources......................................................................194
9.1. 5 Best Offline Image Compression Tools.........................................................194
9.2. 16 Websites to Get Free Images........................................................................200
1. About WordPress
Choosing a perfect platform for building a website or blog can be tiring and calls for
research. There are many options to choose from the list of accessible Content
WordPress.org “powers more than 25% of the internet — with interests ranging from
the news shaping our world to personal stories that shape our own families and lives”.
(Source)
Now, let’s get straightforward with talking in detail about the WordPress.org. It is a
powerful Content Management System which is famous for it’s One Click 5-minute
(WordPress.org)
Most of the people looking to build up websites are often enticed by the tags “Free” and
“Unlimited”. While you can download and install WordPress for FREE, you have to look
beyond what is not told! There are no hidden costs, of course. If you value your time
WordPress requires a hosting service to get your website seen by the world. You will
have to pay to a web hosting service provider to get your self-hosted WordPress
website online. Most of the best web hosting for WordPress service have pre-installed
WordPress.
1.1 What WordPress has to offer?
Self-hosted WordPress allows the web designer or any user to choose from as many
themes as available on the web - whether free, paid or customized! No doubt, there are
free themes available. However, those designed using theme builder software
TemplateToaster are a cut above the rest being high-on-performance and aesthetically
strong. Flexibility in design option gives you the superpower of adding a personal touch
WordPress gives the user/designer, a freedom to upload and take benefit from any
number of free, paid and custom plugins available for use. Plugins are tiny but they
make a huge difference! They add desired functionalities to your site, can make your site
more optimized and user-friendly. However, with so many plugins available by so many
authors today, it takes research to find the best one for your site and what works best for
As discussed, creating a website with WordPress is only possible when you pay to a web
hosting service provider. You can use your custom domain name when you create a
website using WordPress. You know well, how important is it to have a custom domain
The responsibility for keeping your website updated and regular backup of your self-
hosted WordPress.org website falls on your shoulders (or your web hosting service
provider’s, if you have hired one). It is your task to keep SPAM under control and what’s
more important is that you have to keep up with the site’s security at all costs.
While updating is considered good for your website, it may become a reason that can
create hindrance in the functionality of the website! How? Each update comes with some
new functions which may not be compatible with the existing plugins on your site and
thus, plugins may not work efficiently or as expected. It implies that you will need to
replace the old plugins. Don’t forget to backup your self-hosted WordPress website.
The decision to monetize your blog/website is completely in your hands. If you have a
website created with WordPress.org hosting service, you can leverage the traffic of your
website/blog to earn money by placing ad. links and affiliate banners on your website.
Make sure to place relevant ad banners and links onto your website so that the whole
thing doesn’t look out of the place. This should be done strategically so as to earn high
commissions on sales.
1.1.6 SEO
With your own website, you always have the option to install custom plugins to enhance
the performance and reach of your website. The Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most
helping to choose a focus keyword, thus helping you to write better content. It also has
some extensions like Yoast News SEO, Yoast Video SEO, and Yoast Local SEO. Choosing
an SEO-friendly theme for your website is quite crucial to reap maximum benefits from
themes and plugins. You can easily modify the themes using our theme design software
to suit your needs for your very own website - Your virtual address in the web world!
an access to your web server, a text editor, an FTP client, a web server support and an
ability to create MYSQL databases. Once you’re through with the checklist, you can very
well kickstart the installation process. The steps are provided below:
Step 1: Buy your domain and Web Hosting (e.g. Bluehost, Godaddy, Hostgator)
Head over to your chosen provider and buy your domain. We recommend choosing one
with a familiar suffix such as .org or .com even if they are a little more expensive than the
rest since it will be easier for people to remember. It even provides it a trustworthy look.
You need to buy space on someone else’s server because it will always be running. If you
hosted it on your local server, for example, on your home PC. You would never be able
All the major web hosts provide one click installation of WordPress.
Login to your – Bluehost if that’s what you chose, or another – and install WordPress
amounts to essentially a one-click installation! It couldn’t get any easier than this.
Once inside the hosting provider cPanel (essentially just the backend of your website)
with WordPress installed, you need to login to your WordPress CMS (content
You login using the WordPress account details that the hosting provider will have
emailed to you.
Alternatively, you can navigate to your domain admin address, which will be
XAMPP provides the local server environment, the WordPress is a web development
platform. XAMPP is the most common localhost application used by the developers.
Being cross platform, it can be used on Windows, Linux and OSx. In this article we will
Download XAMPP for windows from apachefriends.org. Then, run the installer to get
In the component wizard, all the components are by default selected. You can uncheck
Apache- It is the HTTP web server, and essential to run the website.
PHP- It is a server side scripting language used for making dynamic web pages.
Perl- This language is widely used by the programmers for writing CGI scripts.
Webalizer- It is a web log file analyzer, which generates statistical reports about how
many people visit a website and what do they look for in the website
Fake Sendmail- For testing email transfer on localhost, Fake Sendmail is used. If you are
going to work on such a project which involves sending emails, then this component will
required for WordPress installation. As we don’t have any plan to use the rest
2.2.3 Install
After selecting the components, you will be prompted to specify a location where you
want to install XAMPP. Once you specify the location, the setup will be ready to install.
control.exe inside XAMPP folder and launch it. Default location of XAMPP folder is
C:\xampp
Having to open the control panel, start the Apache and MySQL components. As you will
start these components, their Admin links will become clickable. Then, select MySQL
“Admin” for moving ahead to phpMyAdmin or you can open it from here
http://localhost/phpmyadmin .
On phpMyAdmin interface, find the “Databases” tool on the top-left side and create the
database. For example, we have created the database by the name wordpress.
Once the download is complete, extract the zip file to C:\xampp\htdocs\. If you’ve
extracted the package correctly, you will see the “wordpress” folder inside htdocs.
Select language
Fill the name of database which you have created in the above step. In our case it is'
wordpress'. Fill “root” in username field and leave the password field blank, and fill
In the last field, you may define a prefix to all the database tables, and submit.
That’s it. You have installed WordPress. Now, you are in business.
Log in to dashboard
Now, you have installed WordPress locally. You can move on to the dashboard by
Dashboard might be the first thing you see, once you logged in. You can start
customizing your website from here only. Even it keeps you reporting about new
updates, WordPress Events & news, your activities etc.These elements can be customised
as well. You can keep relevant elements and remove the one which is not required.
Admin bar - The top navigation bar placed above the dashboard offers administrative
options. The My Blog option provides you a public view of your site. So as to help you in
deciding if there is any scope for customization or changes. The toolbar even shows if
there is any update available in a plugin or theme, whatsoever. The right-hand side of
The Menu Bar placed in the extreme left side of the screen. It possess all the options to
customize your WordPress site from pages, posts, plugins to the settings. You can
control all the elements belonging to your site from here. Now, you can see all the
options as follows:
Posts
By default, you get only one post “Hello World!!” after fresh install of WordPress.
Certainly, if you want to add more posts, edit the existing ones or see what all stuff you
All Posts shows all the available posts on your WordPress website.
Here’s what you need to do for creating a new post. Look along the sidebar in
Fill in the post title, write the post, add a media, and simply press the “Publish” button
showing on the right side of the page. This is how, you’ve created a post on your
website.
Media
This is used to keep track of all the media needs of your site audio, video & pictures. It
Library has all the media files that you have already uploaded.
Add New can help you upload a new media file by browsing it.
Pages
WordPress gives you a “Sample Page” by default. You can edit or delete it. You will see
All Pages will show you a list of all the pages you have created till present date with all
details Title, author, date of publish etc & even you can edit or delete a page from here
only.
For handling pages, WordPress has given “Pages” tool on the dashboard.
media and link in your page with the available editing tools. After creating the page, you
The options being shown on the right side, are called theme options, which are available
Comments
You can keep track of all the comments posted by readers on the specified posts with
Appearance
It will display all the installed Themes plus additional Widgets, Menus, Header and
Customize the activated theme and Editor (to edit the coding of theme) options.
Themes option integrates all the themes available. One can also install new themes
Customize option provides you with customization possibilities for your installed theme
Widgets shows the list of active widgets. It can even maintain a list of those that have
Menus option let’s you design the menu structure for your website. Edit Menu tab
provides you with ability to create new menu items and edit existing ones. Manage
locations tab allows you to set the position where you want to have your menu to be
displayed. Number of menu locations depends on the theme you are using.
You can create your own menu and add your pages into it from the “Menus” too.
Appearance -> Menus -> Create a new Menu
You can add pages, custom links and categories in the menu. For this, select the menu
that you’ve created in the above step. Then, find the items you want to add in the menu,
e.g. if you want to add the “Blog” page in the menu. So, select this page and press “Add
to Menu”. Make sure that you’ve pressed “Save Menu” in the end. Similar to the pages,
Menu Structure
You can arrange the menu items in preferred order by simply dragging them from their
Header decides how the header of your blog or website is going to be displayed. You
can customize Header settings from front-end similar to the Customize option above.
Editor option lends you an option to edit the stylesheet, header and other theme files
Plugins
Plugins are used to provide additional functionality to the site. These can implement
Installed Plugins option displays all the plugins in unison that have been installed by
you. Here you can install new plugins from WordPress repository or even upload any
Users
In WordPress you can manage users by specifying their roles so to limit their power of
Your Profile option provides you the option to view your entire profile.
Tools
It displays all the Available Tools. You can Import posts, pages to your WordPress site
from here as well as can Export a .XML file of your content( post, page, media) too.
Settings
As the name indicates, it will enable you all kind of settings regarding;
General manages options available for the site like title, tagline, WordPress address, site
address, email address, site language, date and time format etc.
Writing option provides settings for default post category, format etc. It even helps to
Reading provides options to control the layout of front page and blog (posts) page of
your site. You can set how many posts should be visible on your front page or blog page.
moderation is one of the major option in this category that lets you control spam
Media has options for image settings such as default Thumbnail size, Medium Size
dimensions etc.
Permalinks option offers the ability to create a custom URL structure for your site posts,
pages etc.
3. Creating WordPress Website
a theme to support your envisioned design. Basically a theme is a set of files that provide
A WordPress theme has the capability of transforming your website to its entirety.. If you
change your theme then you automatically bring changes to the way your site appears
on the front-end, i.e. what a visitor views when your site is browsed on the web. Themes
pick the content and data saved by WordPress and showcase it to the world. When you
create a WordPress theme, you choose how that content will be displayed.
In simple words, WordPress themes are a bunch of files made to function together in
order to create what you see, as well as how your site performs.
Important files
There are two files which holds the utter requirement in a WordPress theme:
Though not mandatory yet, you may come across some added files in a theme’s folder
including:
PHP files – carry template files
Localization files
CSS files
Graphics
JavaScript
Text files – carry readme.txt instructions, changelog file and a license info.
If you have been following up by far then, I’d like to bestow you with this information as
to how you can implement graphic design tools and see your “actionable ideas” turning
into fruit-bearing plants. You can absorb this blessing by marching southwards
All web designers have their own box of tools which they use to bring their design ideas
to life. These tools have made the process of designing websites more creative than
technical since in previous times, developing websites purely involved coding. These
tools have provided more intuitive ways of generating websites through their graphical
user interfaces. There are some cool tools out there which might not be well known by
Backbone:
All websites are built on HTML and CSS. These two usually go together since HTML
which is a standard markup language defines the layout of the web pages while CSS
defines the visual look and formatting of the various elements. The fifth version of HTML
is even better with increased multimedia functionality. Any web developer should learn
this language since it is very basic and easy to use and also other higher level web based
Editor:
When designing websites, you might have to do some coding or scripting. One of the
very best code editors is Notepad++. With numerous features such as Syntax
At times you may want to simulate a server on your computer for development purposes
before loading your site on an actual server. In this case, XAMPP is a premium option.
XAMPP is an open source package which enables PHP and MySQL development on an
Apache server. It is very easy to install and completely free so you can develop sites
Frameworks:
Despite knowing how to code, you may still want a quick solution for easy front-end web
development. Bootstrap will help you with great tools for designing responsive sites. It
accommodates developers of all skill levels and you can implement HTML, CSS and
JavaScript. This greatly reduces the need of coding the front end of your site and as a
result, you can focus more on developing the more complex hidden segments of your
sites.
Management System. This is a household name in the internet world. WordPress has
million websites. These websites include individual blogs to mega corporation websites.
What WordPress has managed to do very well is to combine simplicity with incredible
functionality. What this means is that even people who are new to the World Wide Web
become able to develop their own sites with great ease using world class themes and
plugins. The WordPress dashboard is very intuitive and you can even develop a site
without writing a single line of code. WordPress also offers great customization
capabilities and as a result of this, you can personalize your web designs.
FTP:
FTP means File Transfer Protocol, which is user to transfer the files(in this case your entire
website) to the hosting server. We will consider FileZilla, which is a leading File Transfer
Firefox Addons:
When testing your site on a browser, you may want a tool that will enable you to edit
and debug your code as you browse your site. Firebug is a great option in this category.
Firebug gives you a live view of the action as you edit your HTML, CSS or JavaScript. You
can open it in a separate window or assign it a small section in the Firefox window so
that it does not get in your way. You can find specific HTML elements by just clicking on
a given section of the web page. Firebug also offers a great debugger for JavaScript.
When developing the look for your site, you can edit the CSS with firebug, allowing you
to tinker with various colours, backgrounds and effects so that the ultimate final product
is the best.
The last tool, which probably covers all possible areas of web design, is TemplateToaster.
This is a great program with which you can create templates and themes. It is a
WordPress theme builder as well as a Joomla, Magento and Drupal theme creator. With
this Joomla template generator, you can also design and develop HTML5/CSS3 websites.
At first this may sound like it requires you to be a master of programming but it is
entirely the opposite. This Joomla template designer has a great graphical user interface
where you simply drag and drop whatever you want to add to your template or website.
This software is very comprehensive and it caters for all your web design and
development needs.
Now you have it! Make use of these tools to come up with the best websites possible.
You will definitely be on top of your game when designing your websites.
3.1.2 Creating WordPress Theme from Scratch
Don’t want to look gaudy by using an existing WordPress theme? Does it seem
daunting to create a WordPress theme from scratch on your own? Then this article is
for you.
Designers and developers have been unconsciously partial towards WordPress based
themes for not just one but several reasons. At times, some client specifically asks for a
website in WordPress. The reason for that being WordPress, widely known for its
simplicity. In fact, the amount of flexibility, and power it offers to the developers when
they have to create WordPress theme and much more is commendable. Hence, one
There are a number of articles out there about how to install WordPress. But, you can
You will do all the related work to create WordPress theme in the wp_content directory
only. Just make a new theme sub folder in the wp_content → Themes folder. Let’s
The second thing you decide is the layout of the new theme. Here, the tutorial will
showcase the basic layout consisting of Header, Main Area, Footer, Sidebar.
Basically, WordPress needs only 2 files style.css and index.php. But for this layout, you
• header.php - contains the code for the header section of the theme.
• index.php - contains the code for the Main Area and will specify where the
other files will be included. This is the main file of the theme.
• bootstrap.js - provides its own js for the navigation bar, or tabs etc.
You can download the Bootstrap package from here. The Bootstrap.js & Bootstrap.cs file
1. header.php File
<html>
<head>
<title>Tutorial theme</title>
get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/js/jquery.js'; ?>">
</script>
ui.min.js'; ?>">
</script>
get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/js/bootstrap.js'; ?>">
</script>
get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/css/bootstrap.css'; ?>">
</head>
<body>
<h1>HEADER</h1>
</div>
<div class="container">
Header.php file contains the code for a head part in which the js and style file is linked. It
This line added after the title tells the WordPress to load a style.css file that will handle
Here,
get_stylesheet_directory_uri().'/css/bootstrap.css'; ?>">
Here, the Bootstrap is used as it is the best-known framework for responsive websites. It
provides inbuilt css files to style your website. You can download it and keep the
Next, a "div" with class ttr_header is added which will be the main container of the
website. You will set a class for it so that you can modify it via the style.css file.
After that, you will add a simple label HEADER in a "div id" with class "ttr_header" which
2. index.php File
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
will include the header.php file and the code in it are on the main page.
</div>
<?php endwhile; else: ?>
The above code displays the main content of the post that you have created through the
In this file, you can display your recent posts, archives, contact info etc.
After this line, an empty "div" inserted that will separate the Main Area and the Sidebar
sidebar.php File
</div>
</div>
In this file, internal WordPress functions are called to display the different Categories,
Archives of posts. The WordPress function returns them as list items, therefore you have
<h1>FOOTER</h1>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
With this code, a simple FOOTER label will be added. You can also add links, additional
text, the copyright information for your theme in place of plain Footer text.
4. style.css File
body
text-align: left;
#ttr_sidebar
#ttr_footer
{
width: 100%;
text-align: center;
.title
font-size: 11pt;
font-family: verdana;
font-weight: bold;
This CSS file sets the basic looks of your theme. These lines set the background of the
page and surround the main parts of your site with borders as per your need.
your theme to get the looks you want for your blog!
But, this will require the HTML, PHP and WordPress functions knowledge. So you have a
better alternative that is easier and doesn't include even a single code line. Isn’t it
sounding cool !! You can create WordPress theme just in minutes without any coding
knowledge. Eager to know about that solution i.e TemplateToaster a theme builder
software. It provides the enormous fantastic feature with an easy to use drag & drop
interface. So, let’s see how to make WordPress theme from scratch with TemplateToaster.
TemplateToaster installer. Its trial version is free. Follow easy steps to install it. The first
From this screen, you can make the CMS selection. In this case, it will be WordPress With
Content.
Next screen throw the choices to make a theme from scratch or to modify a sample
Now, you will encounter the main interface of the software. From here, you can design
your theme as per your needs easily. It has many self-depicting options like Header,
Menu, SlideShow, Sidebar, Body, Footer, Widget, tabs etc as shown above to design
You can start by designing the Menu from Menu tab. You can simply place it by
selecting the Menu position → Above Header. You will see a menu inserted above
You can also set a background color, gradient or image in the menu from Background
option.
Now, put a Logo in the menu by given option.
Now, you can style the menu items from Menu Button option. From here, you can set a
background color in all the 3 states: Active, Hover, Normal; can change the typography,
Next section is Header. Go to Header Tab. Set its Height from the Height option.
Set a Background for it. You can set a color, gradient or browse an image from in-built
the required text. Put a Button from Editor Tab labeled ‘READ MORE’ and link it by
Now, you will manage the Content area from Content Tab. First of all, you will set the
number of columns you want in a single row. For example, selected two here.
And now in the First column, delete the content and from Editor Tab - You can add an
image.
Then put a Button labeling Learn More. And you can style and link this button to
another page.
Similarly, you can add more content rows.
Now, you are all set to place a Sidebar. Move to Sidebar Tab and select the Layout for
To design the footer, go to Footer tab. It will display many options to design like from
Presets you can choose a predefined footer style containing Designed By text & Link.
From layout, you can change the layout for footer any time.
Firstly, set a Background for the footer. For this, you can also set an image in the
background from the stock images or browse your own custom image. Then, from
Footer Cell option, set the number of rows, columns & width of the footer. As here, 4
columns in the first row and in total 2 rows are selected. Place the social media icons
Put the content and style it by Typography options.You can also set different font colors
at different states of the links like Active, Hover, Normal. Similarly, you can style the
Designed by Text & Link in the Second row. You can also show/hide this from the check
The final look of the Footer will be somewhat like this. So to design it beautifully, you
slideshows, new menu styles etc. You can learn more about creating a website through
• How to design Best Yoga Website: Step by Step Tutorial with Images
TemplateToaster
In Short
You can easily create WordPress theme with help of this tutorial. But the choice merely
depends upon your decision that you want to go for large code lines or through web
design software TemplateToaster. The former will lead to learning the HTML, PHP and
required WordPress functions whereas the latter will allow you to design a beautiful
theme with all the advanced options painlessly. So, creating WordPress theme from
scratch is no more a difficult task now. But the method to create it is entirely in your
hands.
dies soon enough. But this article talks about such everlasting website design ideas that
are creatively ample. And they even promise you improved conversions.
A website’s long run is dependent majorly on two aspects, UI and UX. These two fuels
the business by bringing major traffic to the site. Several trends gain popularity every
year, but only the exclusive ones remain. These design ideas hold intensity. They have
the possibility to provide you with favorable results as likely promised. Their goal is to
fulfill your user’s desires in every possible manner. This further leads to the fulfillment of
your objectives as well. Such website design ideas have been compiled in this article.
Vector Graphics play a key role in your website’s marketing journey. These are the
illustrations pleasing to the eyes. Since “a picture can speak a thousand words”. Similarly,
these visuals can fulfill your website’s motive along with the lesser amount of content.
They can help you interact with readers on a one-to-one basis. Users are going to relate
to the visuals personally. This is called visual marketing. You can use these vector images
to your website’s conversion rate. There are several websites to get free vector designs,
images, and icons which you can use as an asset to your business. Vector Graphics is one
of the notable website design ideas that one must keep in mind.
A Navigation Menu is an essential element in the UI of a website. You don’t want any
user to quit the site if all they witness is a cluster of links. So, what you need to do is,
Hamburger Menu
This menu is one of the most talked about. There have been several corporate sites
which adopted this form. It gives your page a cleaner look. This form of menu adds a
This is one of the most sought-after navigation menu these days. The majority of the
navigation menu flows right through the top of the website. In this style, the menus are
displayed vertically, aligned with the web page. But if you don’t want to hamper your
content’s flow on the main page, then you can also hide the menu with ease. It seems to
be fixed that vertical navigation menus are to be included on the left side. This is best
The navigation menus are getting modernized and improving the traffic on a website.
There are different types of modern navigation menus for websites that can serve your
purpose. The designing of menu bars is a crucial part of web designing. Since it is going
This menu can be called a “path-builder”. It leaves trails behind, on which we can track
the way. It aims at maximum UI experience. This graphical element serves as a literal
navigational aid. It’s intelligent designing and leaving the trails behind, helps the user in
identifying the exact path. These menus are of three types, namely, location
breadcrumbs, attribute breadcrumbs and path breadcrumbs. It depends upon your site
as to which you want to pick. E-commerce websites have n number of products that are
sequenced under a logical category. And there are several other categories also. For
making the user’s search full of comfort and ease, this menu can be fruitful.
Kim Garst, CEO of Boom Social rightly said; visual representation adds value to the user
experience. And, it is the best way of putting your website’s main idea at front. This is
one of those innovative design ideas that pay off. It acts as an eminent way that makes
your website stand apart in a crowd of many. Engages the user in such a way that their
interest gets developed. It brings forth and effectively displays your purpose to the users.
There are video background plugins available for you to include in your site. These are
cost effective tools that help in enhancing the user’s experience. Implementing this
Laziness never pays off but only if you use “Lazy Load Effect”
Now, let's be honest here, how many of you have abandoned a website just because you
If a site takes forever to load, it is surely gonna turn away a lot of your potential
customers. Lazy loading is a technique which enhances the user experience. It gives
them improved load speed. This web design idea helps you to fight off the user’s woes
regarding the speed of the site. There are several plugins available to assist you to
So as to improve the user’s experience, they deserved evolution. Thus, Google laid down
certain guidelines that were to be followed by websites before opting for any sort of
Banners and Popups. This untimely element grew to become one of the most effective
and engaging with the users. Their popping nature was replaced with emerging for the
first few seconds on the initial page. This combat with the issue of bounce rate that used
This is a process of generating customers and prospective leads. Since they catch more
eyeballs than the regular content does. Opt-in forms have been the most renowned
pop-up which helps in extracting higher email subscription rates. This evolution brought
tremendous changes in the conversion rates. Hence, this is one of the revolutionary
Let's recall the last time you met a dull person and were repelled because it was boring.
Contrary to that, imagine meeting a person who is lively and full-of-life, you’re obviously
going to be captivated by their personality. Similarly, interfaces can be dull as well. The
animation is essential to add a personality to the website and lure users. This, in fact, will
drive users to become prospective leads. This is a characteristic trait that accords with
the possible conversion rate on your site. This particular website design idea never
Animations have the power to connect personally with the user and hence, emotionally
too. It can stir the user’s brain and also excite them, by involving quirky or brainy
animations. And, last but not the least, animation ideas hold the power of conversions
too.
Bonus - “Cinemagraphs”: The Illusions, perhaps!
Motion tempts the human eye as well as the brain. Cinemagraphs are neither photos nor
videos. These are still photographs having a movement that occurs repetitively. This
results in a video clip. They are saved as either gif. or in any other video formats. They
trigger the mind and fool users into spending longer time on the site. This is one of the
pioneer website design ideas to grab the attention of the users. And, from the designer’s
point of view, it also saves bandwidth. It has the capacity to convert a dull site into a top-
notch one, provided that you keep in mind a few things. That is, keeping it subtle and
make sure that it is on a loop. This will result in a better UX and higher conversion rates.
Final Thoughts
These website design trends are highly innovative and progressive in nature. These can
improve your website’s traffic substantially. They don’t directly impact your SERPs
rankings, but they will decrease the bounce rate. As in, with a better UI & UX, people will
stop leaving your site and start getting interested in it. Your website’s message will be
delivered to them. Google will eventually start picking your website. This increases your
As a developer, you must be looking for these innovative website design ideas to
increase your conversion rate. After checking these out, there comes a motivation to
work on your website and make it a better platform for your audience. TemplateToaster
can be your fundamental theme design software to incorporate these creative website
design ideas. Since the growth of your website will lead you to the growth of your
business.
If you are a photographer, it is utmost for you to have your own website where you can
showcase your work to the audience. Your website will contain your portfolio, your blogs,
and your contact information. Making a photography website is not a hard job. You can
easily do it with WordPress. The WordPress is the easiest Content Management System
for developing websites. We will show you how you can use WordPress for developing
You can install WordPress either on a web host or a localhost. Using a web host, you can
directly work on your site on the server. On the other side, you will be creating your site
on your personal computer system with a localhost. There is no difference in using
WordPress on a web host and a local host. Almost every web host gives an option of
One Click Installation. So, you can install WordPress with a single click on the web host.
If you want to know about local installation of WordPress, then, read out the .procedure
For your site, you will need a theme. We are going to show you making a photography
theme with the help of TemplateToaster. Before we start, we would like to give you an
automated web design tool, since, we design the themes using the graphical design
options and it automatically generates the code for those themes. Hence, one can
theme generator. You may download its free trial with unlimited trial period.
when we initialize the software, above screen appears. We select WordPress from here.
We preferred to show you making out photography theme from scratch, though the
screen. The default color scheme and typography of TemplateToaster is set according to
Above is the design interface of TemplateToaster. It looks very clean and structured. For
from the design. For this, open the “Header” tab and select “No Header” option.
Designing Menu
We have placed the logo in the top left corner. TemplateToaster allows to browse the
custom logo and offers its own stock too. There are very interactive logos in
TemplateToaster provides the flexibility of drawing text area anywhere in the design. Its
text editor is very nice, which allows to insert image, video, tables and hyperlink inside
Then comes the menu items; for them, we want Google fonts. When we select the
typography option, TemplateToaster further details the options for setting font and size
for normal, hover and active item of the menu. You can choose a big size and different
Our theme includes a beautiful slideshow. To include the slideshow in the theme, select
the “Slideshow” tab from the ribbon, and activate the slideshow option. By default, three
slides are included in the slideshow, you can add more using “+” symbol. Then, select
We have configured the social media icons in the footer. The icons can be browsed from
system, or can be picked from the TemplateToaster’s social media icon stock.
We have reached to the last step of the designing process that to export the theme.
Theme can be exported by clicking the WordPress icon in the quick access toolbar.
Another way to export the theme is, go to File---->Export----> Specify File Name and
You can see the demonstration videos of the use of all tabs and options provide by the
We login to our WordPress dashboard. And apply our theme in this way- Appearance ->
Add New -> Upload -> Browse your theme -> Install Now -> Activate.
We will need a gallery plugin to show up your photographs in an interactive way. There
is an abundance of gallery plugins. From such a huge number of plugin we’ve picked
Photo Gallery from the repository. It creates mobile-ready galleries and very easy to
WordPress dashboard.
Select “Add Galleries/ Images” options for creating a new gallery. The plugin has native
WordPress user interface. You can easily add images as well as videos. You can embed
YouTube videos, Vimeo videos, Instagram posts, Flicker photos, and Dailymotion videos
in your gallery.
You can display the galleries on the pages, posts and widgets. You can upload JPG, JPEG,
PNG and GIF images and can set a watermark to prevent them being used anonymously.
Blog, and Contact Me. Read here to know about adding/editing pages and allocating to
the menu.
You can add the photo gallery to the “Gallery Page” while creating it. A new button,
which is called gallery button, gets created in the page/post editor when this plugin is
installed. Clicking this button, we are prompted to configure display settings, like,
number of columns, thumbnail dimensions, light box dimension and effects, control
buttons, and more. After configuring the gallery display options, press “Insert” gallery,
efforts. You are seeing above the homepage of the website, which includes the
Following image shows the view when a photograph is selected from the gallery.
Closing Words
We used TemplateToaster generated theme and Photo Gallery plugin to craft a portfolio
site. So, we are sure that the portfolio can be seen by the viewers on the smartphones
flawless responsiveness of the sites. Hence, it enables the developers and designers to
create professional themes and templates in less time. The Photo Gallery is also a
responsive plugin. The plugin allows to create unlimited responsive galleries to the user.
3.3 Extending WordPress Functionality
A great amount of WordPress plugins is there. Some are free, some are paid. Some work
just basic, some are outstandingly advanced. Some are very popular, some are under the
shadow of popular ones. We are going to tell you about the best WordPress plugins,
which are free, advanced, very popular, and are utmost useful for WordPress powered
websites.
Yoast SEO helps optimizing a website to gain better search engine ranking. This is a top-
notch SEO plugin, which you can download for free from the WordPress plugin directory.
It enables the user to write meta title, meta description and meta robot tags (index/no-
index, follow/no-follow) for the blog posts, pages, categories, tags, and archives of the
website, which is a good SEO practice. It also helps the user to set the search engine
friendly permalinks for the website. Additional important feature of Yoast is automatic
Page Analysis. The Yoast analyses the page and tells the user what improvements are
W3 Total Cache is used for improving the performance of the website by caching it.
There are several cache plugins that do the same job, but the W3Total Cache is the most
advanced out of them. This plugin provides several options to control different aspects
of website caching, like, browser caching, page caching, object caching, database
caching. And, also provides the support for various content delivery networks. If you are
not having great knowledge about caching techniques, you can go with the default
settings of this plugin. Otherwise, you can custom configure each aspect of the web
caching.
In one of our earlier blog posts, we have discussed about 5 best WordPress plugins for
exceptionally for providing protection from hackers and malware attacks to a website.
The most appreciated feature of Wordfence is real time blocking. The real time blocking
ensures that a hacker will be automatically blocked for all the Wordfence secured
websites. You will also find the firewall settings for keeping fake Google bots and
malicious scan off your website. The administrator can see real time traffic on the
website for staying informed about user activity and whether the user is a human or a
robot.
Comment Spam is a very common problem encountered by blogs. The WordPress has
its own mechanism to provide protection to your blog, but that’s not enough. The
Akismet has advanced mechanism to protect blogs and websites from Spam. The
interesting thing is that, WordPress users never have to download and install this plugin
make an online store using WordPress and WooCommerce combination. And, extend
the store anytime with the help of add-ons. The WooCommerce allows you to
implement tax rules of any country, manage coupons and discounts, see the sales report
on the dashboard itself, add multiple payment gateways, cross-sell and up-sell the
products, enable multiple shipment methods, leverage the shipment tracking, and do
UpdraftPlus is a backup plugin. It creates and save the backup of your website on your
preferred location, as per the schedule you set. You can save the backup on your
computer as well as on cloud. It allows to separately run the backup schedule for
database and files. It also works as a site duplicator, so you can copy the site and move
to other location.
The editing option provided by the WordPress are very limited. The Tiny MCE Advanced
plugin adds more editing and formatting options in the default WordPress editor,
thereby, enriches the default WordPress editor for faster and better editing. TinyMCE
advanced enables to use custom font families and font sizes, create and edit tables in
the posts, search and replace the words, use subscript and superscript, use letters for
websites. You can easily create multiple and multi-type contact forms with its user
friendly interface. By multi-type, we mean that you can create query form, quotation
form, lead-capture form, or a feed back form with the Contact Form 7. Features Ajax
powered submission, the contact form 7 even supports CAPTCHA and Akismet Spam
filtering.
Adding an image in a WordPress post and a page is very simple. But, adding an image in
the sidebar, header, and footer is not very simple. One needs to write the HTML for this.
In such a case the Image Widget comes into its own. It allows to add an image in any
widget area with ease. It allows the user to set the title, alt text and a caption, alignment
and a link on the image. Also, allows to select the size of image.
This plugin is on top of the best WordPress plugins to add social media share and follow
buttons in a website. It has support for more than 100 social websites. It also gives an
option to show the share and follow counts with the icons. Plus, you have the option of
floating buttons. Not only share and follow, but, it even allows to save and email your
posts and pages. Above all, it doesn’t hinder the loading of website by loading
creating portfolio and photography websites. You can create standard as well as
Instagram galleries with this plugin. To let you prevent your images from being stolen or
used anonymously, It also provides the option set the watermarks or advertisement on
the images.
Want to display your popular posts with thumbnails? This is a go to plugin for doing
that. You can display your popular posts in any widget area of your site. The popular
posts can be filtered according to number of comments or according to the views. Plus,
view count and comment count can also be shown with the posts. Also, you can opt to
users. This plugin helps the user to automatically send out emails with SMTP support. It
features unlimited subscriptions and emails with tracking. With single or double opt-in
feature, you can display subscription form in any widget area. It allows to upload your
logo and configure social media profiles in the emails. Also, it offers some customizable
email templates for helping you in designing the interactive newsletters/emails. It lets
you customize subscriber preferences so that you can better run your email campaign.
This is a go to plugin for giving the search facility to the site visitors. This plugin allows to
make custom settings like, order of search results, exclusion of specific categories and
tags from search results, search terms highlighting in results, synonym searching etc.
Apart from these, the Relevanssi features “fuzzy matching”. Here you can know about
Google map streetview and allows to include polylines/routes in map too. More features
include store locator functionality with country filter, ability to add polygons, auto-
complete, transport layer, weather layer, etc. Apart from these features, it allows to
determine the look and feel of the map from the 6 inbuilt options of map theme.
The WordPress codex defines some guidelines and rules for developing themes. A theme
must follow those guidelines and rules to get submitted in WordPress.org. This plugin is
used by the developers for making sure that their themes follow standards of WordPress
codex.
Wrapping it Up
We have covered every aspect of a website to put the best WordPress plugins for you.
We started with the plugin, which is needed immediately as the development of the
website get’s completed, i.e. search engine optimization.Then, we covered the security,
can be placed only in a defined area for it, which is called widget area. There can be
multiple widget areas in a WordPress theme and user can place multiple widgets in
those areas. The WordPress comes preloaded with a dozen of widgets of different types,
and allows you to add, arrange and remove them in the widget areas through
the opposite side. You just need to drag a widget to the preferred widget area to fit it
into the structure of your theme. Widget areas are created by the author of the theme as
If you would like to design a theme with custom widget areas, then you may download
programming for using this tool. This tool automatically generates the source code of
theme for the user. You can try it for free to evaluate its usability. And, this is one of the
best feature of TemplateToaster that it allows you to create multiple widget areas
Well, we are going to give you the information about the most useful WordPress widgets
that you could think of include into your website. These widgets are created by the
plugins, which are available in the WordPress directory. So, you need to install the
respective plugin from the WordPress directory for using the widget(s).
This widget is amazing. It offers more than a dozen widgets with its single installation,
which are- Button widget, Call-to-Action widget, Editor Widget, Features widget, Google
Maps widget, Headline widget, Hero widget, Image widget, Post Carousel widget, Price
Table widget, Slider widget, Social Media buttons widget, and Video widget.
By default only four widgets are enabled. You can enable more widgets by navigating to
Plugins--> SiteOrigin. Here you can enable/disable the required widgets. All the widgets
are amazing and the most amazing thing is that a whole bundle is free. Have a look at
the number of active installation and user rating of this widget bundle.
This widget allows you to insert text, links, and media in the widgetized area. Although,
you can do the same with the help of text widget, but that requires you to write HTML.
This widget overcomes the hurdle of writing HTML by providing WYSIWYG editor.
Go to widget management panel and find the Visual Editor in the widget list. Drag it to
the preferred widget area and you see a WYSIWYG editor. Visual Editor reminds the
native WordPress editor, which you use for adding/editing posts and pages.
It can work on multisite and supports more than twenty languages. Here is its active
Image Widget
This widget is highly useful to add a single image with title and description in the widget
area. Its simplicity and quality both are most admired by the user that make it rated 4.9
of the image, and an option to set the size of the image, you can set custom height and
width of the image too. This widget supports template overriding, so you can override
It supports ten languages in total. Following is the number of active installs and user
WordPress Popular Posts widget is an advanced widget. You can use this plugin with
different settings in different widget areas. Moreover, you can display your most popular
posts on your pages as well, using [wpp] shortcode. You can find the shortcode
shows you the settings at the time of configuring the widget in the widget area.
It even supports custom post types. You can sort the popular posts according to the
comments or according to the views. And, time range can be set 24 hours, or a week, or
a month, or the whole lot time since you have made posts.
Take a glance at the number of active downloads and user rating of this widget.
Social Media Feather creates two social media widgets for you. One for social media
sharing and another for social media follow. If you’ve read our previous posts about
social media sharing and following plugins for WordPress, you must be aware of the
settings of this plugin. It supports a dozen of social media platforms that even include
describe the social media URLs (for social following). Keeping the importance of social
media buttons on the websites, this widget would be very much useful to you. Following
The next useful and very simple plugin on our list is Recent Tweets Widget. It nicely does
its job of displaying the recent tweets on user’s website. You can configure the widget in
no time and see the tweets being displayed. This widget uses Twitter’s recent version of
API (v1.1) with cache. Owing to the feature of cache it ensures that the user is not rate
limited by the Twitter. You can set the time for updating the cache.
To get the API keys and token, the link is at the top of the setting. By clicking through
the given link and signing into the Twitter account, you can get the required information.
Take a glance at the active installs and the rating of this widget.
Using this widget for showing the Google map is an easier way. This widget is mostly
used by the business websites for making it easier for the people to find out their brick
and mortar offices/ stores. In the following image, you can see the settings offered by
this widget.
Aside from defining your address, you can select the level of zoom and color scheme of
map. You can also define a custom URL if you want to link the map to that URL.
Following is how many websites are actively using this widget and the user rating of this
widget.
The special recent posts widget offers advanced thumbnail management to the users.
You can display your recent post in interactive manner using this widget. It shows
featured image or the first image of the post as thumbnail. You can set the dimensions
more than forty customization options to the user. So, you can definitely show your
recent posts in rocking style. Take a look at the active installs and user rating of this
widget.
You can use this widget for displaying the videos from your YouTube channel onto your
blog. You can easily populate the widget area of your choice with your videos. In one of
our blog, we have described about configuring the settings of this widget.
Its default settings are fine unless you want to set your different options. You would just
need to describe the YouTube API key and the User id. All in all, this widget is nice
candidate for displaying your videos in a grid view at the sidebar (or at any widgetized
area). Following is the data of its active installs and user rating.
an interest in my mind were Optimization and Security. Since for any website, these two
are the key elements. Without optimization and security a website can never get
remarkable page views, popularity, and reach. So, the parameters of a successful website
not only include design, development, and SEO; but also include making the website
page development, we all want our website to load within seconds. We can lose our
customer if the website is slower than our competitor, even by only a few seconds. More
loading time would decrease conversions and increase bounce rate. A fast website is
vital to provide amazing user experience and to rank well in search engines (SERP).
The importance can also be judged by what Google thinks about encouraging users to
visit our website. Google made an announcement in 2010, stating the significance of
Below are some statistics to show the need of fast loading pages:
• 8% of probable buyers consider slow loading web pages as the primary reason for
• 57% of your website visitors will leave your page if page load time is 3 seconds or
more.
Therefore, let’s start with some ways through which we can optimize our website.
into detail about some well-known ones such as using proper web host and fast theme.)
Optimizing our database is essential, since the larger our database is, the more time it
WP-Optimize plugin is a WordPress database optimization tool that also cleans up your
database. You don’t have to visit PhpMyAdmin to perform it. An optimized database
would work like a charm for a CMS like WordPress. Figure 1 demonstrates what this
plugin does and how it helps in achieving the goal. Just click on “Process” to clean the
database.
Figure 1
In the above figure, we can see that the WP-Optimize Plugin detected the following on
Cleaning up auto draft posts, etc. Remove unwanted trackbacks and pingbacks. Not only
comments, trackback, and pingbacks increase the size of the database, but Post
Revisions also do the same and many users do not have any idea about it.
Figure 2
A trackback gets created when someone links to you and it uses database resources. So,
Figure 3
Minify
Minify means removing double spaces, empty new lines, comments, etc. from CSS and JS
Have you ever thought the decrease in loading time of a website is because you do not
know how to minify the CSS and JS files of your WordPress website? If yes, then do not
worry, a plugin known as BWP Minify works best in this case. It combines all the CSS and
JS files. It uses the PHP library Minify. It also uses the enqueue system of WordPress to
English, Spanish.
Figure 4
Image is what provides visual clarity and information to visitors. The image quality
should be excellent, but if the image is not compressed, it can increase the page size,
and in turn lead to slower loading of web pages. However, you can easily compress any
image using tools and software, but compressing every image manually and uploading
can increase your work time resulting in less time to focus on other important issues.
Why not get a tool or plugin that does the work automatically for you, right? Yes, there’s
Before using the plugin, I used to compress every image of my WordPress website
whenever I used to, let’s say publish 3 contents daily. It was tiresome for me, right? But,
then I switched to WP-Smush plugin and it automatically reduced the size of images
whenever I uploaded them in Media. Figure 5 is a screenshot in which you can see the
plugin has smushed around 184 images with the outcome being: “Reduced by 3.39MB”.
Figure 5
Caching
Implement Caching by using a plugin on your WordPress website, since it can reduce the
loading time. It also helps your site in handling large volumes of traffic. I use WP Super
Cache and I am quite satisfied with it. It also gives an option on the top of the
Dashboard to “Delete Cache”. Caching also includes caching of feeds, Gzip, etc.
Figure 6
Plugin Count and Quality
Do not rely so much on plugins and keep the count to less than 20. I deleted two or
three when I discovered they were low quality and not of much use. They were just
slowing down the website. Try to keep your plugins updated, since older versions can
have bugs that will make your website less secure. Updated plugins are more optimized
and safe.
WordPress plugin directory shows useful information about plugins. This includes
ratings, number of downloads, feedback, and also a notification on the homepage if the
plugin hasn’t been updated for 2 years. Figure 7 is a screenshot showing this type of
information.
Figure 7
plugin, but hasn’t been updated in a year. However, it is quite an awesome tool. I
Figure 8
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
Wikipedia states
network of proxy servers deployed in multiple data centers. The goal of a CDN is to serve
If your website is having high traffic, then you may want to try a Content Delivery
Network (CDN). A well known CDN is MaxCDN. CDN host images, CSS, and JS files and
serves them to visitors from the closest location to them, thereby saving seconds.
The checklist for monitoring performance can check the page loading time and page
size of your website. Issues which are leading to slow loading can also be seen following
the report. These are also known to check the performance of a website.
• Pingdom
Figure 9 and Figure 10 show the results of when I tested my website, before and after
the loading time and page size. A comparison between January and February, shown
here, easily reveals an absolute reduction in load time. I am, however, still working on
reviewing some new plugins and other resources through my live website to procure
Figure 10
Final Thoughts
Start verifying your website with the checklist and focus on reducing the loading time of
your website. Better loading time would increase the page views, decrease the bounce
optimized for the search engines, you might not get the full benefits out of it. SEO is not
very hard, all it takes is unfeigned efforts. If you get to know the white-hat techniques,
then you can simply do optimize your website for search engines. Therefore, we decided
to let our readers know about the simple and effective SEO techniques.
All your efforts and tactics applied will go in vain if you don’t have the focus on the
“content”. Google prioritizes the content of a site over other things. But, this doesn’t
mean that you write anything, and Google will like your site. Google likes “good
content”. So, be utmost fair when you are writing the content of your site.
Let us tell you that how you can come in Google’s good graces, in context of the content
of your website.
Give your readers something that is interesting and informative for them. Bring your own
experiences, from which the readers could learn something new. Whatever you write,
write by keeping the user in mind, who is going to read this. Don’t just write for the sake
of writing. It would be best, if you could use real images, infographics, and videos in your
interest and relevant to your website, they will certainly like to visit your website over
and again. And, the search engines will also start counting your website’s authority.
There are some more things that should be kept in mind for producing good content
that will benefit your website coming top of the search results.
• Make the keyword anchor text, but not every keyword should be made anchor
• Alt text on images, always add an Alt text with the images
• Outbound links, link to the similar niche sites and authority sites
All in all, be true to your content practices. Write original, give useful information, give
the people solutions, and be sure on implementing the above points in bullets for your
content.
the search engine optimization efforts. Therefore, every time our recommendation goes
to the use of an optimized theme. There are two key factors of an optimized theme that
it must have a clean structure and validation with W3C & WordPress coding guidelines.
It ensures that the theme will not cause performance issues and will not conflict with the
WordPress SEO plugins. The TemplateToaster takes care of these two factors for
producing WordPress themes. You can use this software for making optimized
The Permalinks are the particular URLs of the pages, posts and categories of a website.
Like https://blog.templatetoaster.com/improve-performance-of-your-wordpress-
website/ is the permalink of our post, published a short time back on our site. Whenever
you create a new post or a new page, WordPress auto generates its permalink as per
default settings. That auto generated permalink is not as clean and friendly as is
recommended by the SEO experts. So, the customization of default permalink is advised
to you.
For changing the default permalink structure, go to Settings and select permalinks. You
will see the following screen. We suggest you to set the simple structure of permalinks,
Saving the changes, WordPress will always generate the permalink according to the
saved settings. In fact, WordPress allows you to change the permalink for individual
posts even. When you craft a new post or page, you can see the option to edit the
permalink of that particular post. For instance, the highlighted part of the permalink,
• Erase the stop words from permalinks, such as “is”, “and”, “are”.
In one line, we would say that short, meaningful and keyword included permalinks will
give you search advantage. So, make this your rule for setting your permalinks.
of optimizing your website. WordPress repository has some best SEO plugins. Check out
this post about best SEO plugins on TemplateToaster’s blog to know if which plugin will
As expected, an SEO plugin will help you do some utmost important things for your site.
The foremost thing is that it will help you add Meta Titles and descriptions to your pages
and posts. Besides this, you can define Meta robot attributes, which tell search engine
in an automatic way. The Sitemap helps the search engine crawler to crawl the site better
as it consists all the URLs of the website and additional information about them.
pages (SERPs). Faster loading websites are more likely to be ranked well by Google. Fast
speed causes better user experience. Slow loading websites are not liked by the users, be
they are having good content. Therefore, if you’ve a good content for the users, ensure
their good experience too. If you do the both the things for the user that are good
content and fast speed, then, certainly the outcome will cheer you up.
You may use a cache plugin for improving site’s speed. Read this post, consisting the
information and advice regarding WordPress cache plugins, to know about the best
cache plugins.
You can check your web speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It gives the speed
score to the website, and show the fixes to resolve the issues with the page speed.
5.5 Make Your Website Responsive
Google love mobile-friendly websites. With the roll out of Mobilegeddon algorithm of
Google, now it has become very important to make your website responsive for mobiles.
Google gives heavy weightage to the responsive websites during their raking in search
results. Hence, being responsive can give your the SEO advantage.
If your website is already responsive, have you tested it with Google? You should put
your site on Google’s Mobile Friendly Test. If Google verifies the website, you can rest
data of social media to determine the rank of a site. More the people would like,
comment or share your content on there, more are the chances of getting your content
ranked well by the Google. We would recommend you to share your content on your
social platforms. Your social media activities for spreading worthwhile content through
the social channels will accelerate the SEO of your site and it is a direct and most
Top ranking is all that you would want in the end. Google and the other search engines
aim at providing their user with the best user experience. Hence, the key to success is to
provide the people best experience, as much as you can. But, the search engine robots
are not humans, how would you provide them their best experience. After all, people
would reach to your site when search engines will give it a place on the front page. So, it
is important to please them. For this, you adopt the practices like setting up pretty
permalinks, genuine link building, social media recognition, faster web speed, updated
implementation but still under heavy DDoS? We bet you haven't done 'EVERYTHING'!
With the growing impact of Internet on all facets of life, websites are increasingly dealing
with private and sensitive customer data. A security breach can lead to your website
getting hacked. It can result in a major security lapse for well-established businesses. It
need to understand security issues and take steps towards hardening WordPress
security. As a web developer, you need to be able to assess the risks you’re facing.
WordPress security is a complicated topic. In this article, we help you gain an overall
manage the security risks to your WordPress website. Most of these techniques are
general and also, can be used for other Content Management Systems like Joomla,
Magento etc.
to W3 Techs, the WordPress platform accounts for more than 25% of the websites
majority of the WordPress sites serve a broad range of other purposes.The worst
nightmare for a WordPress developer is to get his websites hacked. Hacks are very much
the last 12 months. WordPress Security Hardening basically means taking precautionary
and preventive steps to lock down your WordPress website. This would essentially
The worst nightmare for a WordPress developer is to get his websites hacked. Hacks are
very much common and happening frequently, with 38.9% developers reporting a
compromise in the last 12 months. WordPress Security Hardening basically means taking
precautionary and preventive steps to lock down your WordPress website. This would
essentially prevent hackers and vulnerabilities from affecting the website or blog.
Security is the most important concern for organisations these days. A well-known and
reliable resource of information related to web application security is the OWASP, non-
profit online community. The Open Web Application Security Project creates articles,
tools, and technologies on web security. Their website is a comprehensive resource for
Let us look at security from WordPress standpoint and the details of WordPress
vulnerabilities and security issues. We will also try to understand the strategies and
safe platform for secure businesses. As per a Q2 2016 report by Sucuri, WordPress at
74% continues to lead the number of infected websites they worked on.
In most cases, website hacking occurs primarily since users continue to follow industry-
that security practices once implemented will protect their websites forever. They are not
aware of the need to revise, review and update the security measures on a regular basis.
WordPress is the most popular CMS and this has resulted in an ecosystem which
includes over 42,000 plugins. Plugins are a very important asset to a WordPress site. An
average of over 10 plugins are in use on every website. The foremost advantage of
WordPress is its extensibility. However, it is also the cause of the vast number of
are frequently being discovered. Each new plugin is prone to adding additional
vulnerabilities.
There are three main components of WordPress that are important from a security
perspective.
• Core – the basic default WordPress installation files that provide most of the
functionality.
• Theme – the presentation layer that may offer some limited extended
functionality.
A point to note is that WordPress security vulnerabilities go beyond the core into the
third-party themes or plugins. A recent report by wpscan.org, states that from the 3,972
The goal of a website hacker is to gain unauthorised access to your WordPress site with
administrative access. This is done either from WordPress dashboard or on the server
side by inserting scripts or files. Hacking may not always be initiated by a person; the
• Single Bot is an automated computer that can attack one site at a time or a
attacks.
• A Person who goes into hacking systems manually, attacks one site at a time.
• A Botnet is a group of computers that at the same time attack multiple sites
rapidly. These attacks are unsophisticated but a large number of computers with
There are two primary types of attacks that can take place against WordPress websites:
These are generic and take advantage of a known vulnerability. These attacks may work
by scanning a range of IP addresses. The automated system looks for a specific version
These attacks happen when a hacker targets a website specifically. Note that the more
Listed below are the common security issues and risks associated with WordPress:
1. Brute Force Attacks: These attacks refer to the repeated entering of multiple
username and password combinations until success is achieved. The brute force
attack method exploits the WordPress login screen to get access to the website.
WordPress, by default, doesn’t limit login attempts. Bots can attack the WordPress
2. File Inclusion Exploits: A WordPress website runs at the backend on PHP code.
Vulnerabilities in the PHP code are the next most common security issue with
WordPress. File inclusion exploits occur when a vulnerable code is used to load
remote unsafe files. These allow hackers to gain access to the website and its wp-
config.php file.
3. SQL Injections: WordPress uses SQL to query the database. This makes it
vulnerable to SQL Injection Attacks. SQL injections occur when an attacker gains
access to the WordPress database and the website data. He may be able to create
a new admin user account. He can then login and get full access to the WordPress
website. SQL injections may also insert new data into the WordPress database
plugins, XSS vulnerabilities are very common and likewise complex. The attacker
gets an innocent victim to load web pages with insecure JavaScript scripts. These
application they are authenticated in. For example, a phishing email with a link to
• Backdoors
• Drive-by downloads
• Pharma hacks
• Malicious redirects
be well-informed of the latest vulnerabilities. You will then be able to update your site
for every new vulnerability. But updating the WordPress is not enough. There are more
It is just not about protecting the website and its files. The user or customer data is most
crucial to be protected. The WordPress MySQL database is the backend for WordPress
You need to primarily protect the customers’ data. If the website is insecure and gets
Next, you need to protect your website. This includes protecting the website files also. It
would be disastrous if an attacker is able to read or modify your website files or source
code. They can collect user data and also gain admin login access. Once the files are
advanced users. The key is to identify WordPress vulnerabilities and adopt techniques
and tools to get around them. The article here discusses some of the potential
elaborate the advanced issues and how to tackle them with slightly more effort.
1. Backup your website: The most important thing is to backup your website
data on a regular basis. If your website is hacked you can restore your WordPress
site from a non-infected backup. It is also critical to store the backup data at a
trusted location. You also need to take care and remove all old backups of the site
2. Pick a solid WordPress host: Selecting a WordPress Host gives the option to
WordPress security. Security measures at both hardware and software level are
company and choose wisely when you decide how to host your website.
3. Use reputable themes and plugins: Download add-ons for your site from
reputable sources as it reduces the scope for potential hackers. Most well-
from a company like Sucuri prior to release. Vulnerabilities can occur in these
4. Use secure protocols: Communication between the web server and the
communication between browser and web server. You can follow your hosting
provider’s instructions to enable HTTPS. Once HTTPS is enabled, you need to edit
the “.htaccess” and the “wp-config.php” file as per the information here. Use sFTP
in place of normal FTP for file transfers and other commands. The sFTP protocol
uses strong encryption to sign-in and works on SSH which is already installed on
5. Change the WordPress login URL: A WordPress site’s default login URL is
scripts. You can change the URL and be better protected from brute force attacks.
You can change the WordPress login URL from the “General” section in settings.
not share passwords and changing passwords regularly are some of the easy to
follow rules.
all your accounts challenging as possible. Use unique, and difficult to guess
usernames and passwords across all your accounts, not just your WordPress login.
sensitive code is required to login. This method is one to lock down the
attacks.
8. Limit access to vital parts of your WordPress website: You need to make it
more difficult for a hacker to access specific pieces of the WordPress installation.
Though this can be accomplished with a security plugin, you can also take the few
like one directory above the WordPress installation. To move the wp-
• Secure the “.htaccess” file by adding allow and deny rules to it.
• Turn off XML-RPC in the “.htaccess” file. Keeping the XML-RPC enabled is
• Change directories and files to have the correct permissions both on the
WordPress installation and on the web server. Set the permissions on the
writing to it.
apache/apache, which is the default web server role. Try to create a new
user that will be the default and disallow the rights to the web server user.
WordPress Admin panel. Hackers also usually try to edit PHP files or
the wp-config.php file. Hackers will not be able to access files without an
FTP access.
9. Run scheduled malware scans: Keep tabs on potential malware infections with
scheduled malware scans. Most scan tools give you a report on the website’s
malware status.
10. Keep your WordPress site updated: Keep your WordPress site updated to
avoid potential WordPress security issues. If there are any premium WordPress
plugins or themes installed keep them updated. Ensure to renew the license to
get updates.
11. Use a WordPress Security Plugin: Use a WordPress security plugin for your
WordPress website. Most security plugins offer options to set important and
security.
base.
Remember that you can’t just setup and configure a number of settings or programs for
WordPress security and think you are done with security. A point to keep in mind is that
schedule for malware and vulnerability scanning, and analyse the logs carefully and
regularly.
Every few years, OWASP releases the “OWASP Top 10”, a list of the Top 10 critical security
risks. The primary goal is to help developers and security teams implement better
security for the applications. The OWASP Top 10 list is revised each time to reflect new
risks as they evolve. Also added are techniques and best practices for avoiding and
• A1 – Injection
• A5 – Security Misconfiguration
The chart below shows the spread of the most common vulnerabilities trends and the
Note that 32% of these attacks are from A3 – Cross-Site Scripting XSS or from A1 –
Injection. 20% of the attacks are by unknown methods which do not give any data for
the background of the attacks. The rest of the attacks are due to miscellaneous methods,
many of which are in the OWASP Top 10. You can read more about these security risks at
practices. The tips mentioned ahead are for added security and are advanced methods
of hardening WordPress security. Most of these techniques are complicated and you
need to understand them well. It is strongly recommended to first test these on a test
site. The coding details of most of these methods can be found here.
We know that WordPress is quite secure as long as developers follow standard security
practices. The tips mentioned ahead are for added security and are advanced methods
of hardening WordPress security. Most of these techniques are complicated and you
need to understand them well. It is strongly recommended to first test these on a test
site. The coding details of most of these methods can be found here.
The Cross Site Tracing (XST) and the Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks target systems
which have the HTTP TRACE functionality. HTTP TRACE is a default functional feature on
most webservers and is used for things like debugging. Hackers who use XST typically
steal cookies and other sensitive information using header requests. You can disable the
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [F]
2. Remove header outputs from your WordPress Installation
WordPress at times adds a lot of output in the header. This output is specific to the
various services that are part of WordPress. To remove this output, add the following
remove_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');
WordPress uses a default prefix value of “wp_” for the DB tables. This can be used by
malicious bots and hackers to guess your DB table names. Changing the WP DB prefix
value is much easier to do at installation time because it is set in the wp-config.php file.
However, if the site is already live then the method is a more complicated.
• Do a full database backup and save the backup somewhere. You may use a
text file. You may also take a backup of this text file.
• Using the “phpmyadmin”, remove the old DB and import the new one using the
Identify the potentially dangerous query strings. Add the following code in your
.htaccess file to help prevent XSS attacks. These set of rules will strip the URL requests of
many dangerous attack injections. You can add more strings here though we have
included the common ones. Note that the functionality of some plugins or themes could
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
</IfModule>
You can install and enable a PHP hardening system on your server. This can further
It is important to hide the version of WordPress you are using from hackers. If it is
publicly available, it would help hackers identify the vulnerability they can use to hack
the site. WordPress 2.6 and above automatically adds the version in the WP_head
It is still possible that even with so much password protection, hackers may still find ways
to crack the password of your WordPress admin. Let us see how login lockdown works. If
a user makes too many failed login attempts, they will immediately be locked out from
logging in the site for the next few hours. This feature is available with most security
plugins in WordPress. This is one of the effective defenses against brute-force attacks.
monitor their site. Even the best monitoring tools may have a delay between each site
scan. There are various ways you can yourself use to detect if your site has been hacked.
• Your browser would in most cases alert you about the hack.
• Use a monitoring service to detect if more than a very small percentage of the
• Use a Remote Scanner that looks at the HTML that your site produces. This
So can you really fix a hacked WordPress site or all is lost when your website is hacked?
A hacked website can be easily recovered; let us see how it can be done:
immediately.
• If you can login to the site as admin, then remove the hacked files and seal the
point of entry.
• If you cannot login to the site then ask for help from your web host.
We have looked at the methods to improve the security of your WordPress sites. It is a
well-known fact that risk reduction wins over risk elimination. Risk reduction is proactive
and will keep you safe in all scenarios. Thus security is about risk reduction, not risk
elimination since risk will never be zero. You should deploy security controls that best
Let us now collate the security best practices which if followed will result in hardening
WordPress security. These best practices will surely protect your site from possible
• Make WordPress core code updates quickly. You can also auto-configure the
updates.
• Proactively upgrade plugins and themes as new versions become available.
• Keep track of Zero-day vulnerabilities. When a zero day is announced, you will
need to work closely with the vendor to find out when a fix will be released and
Bonus: Check out this Security Index developed by Brian Jackson at Kinsta which is
We know by now that WordPress security is on ongoing activity. You need to work
towards hardening WordPress security and keeping your WordPress sites secure. This
harm websites, web servers, users’ PCs, tablets, and other smart devices. WordPress is a
popular CMS and knowledge about WordPress security is widely available. Being aware
of the security hardening practices and putting them in your workflow is a must. While
running a maintenance on your website and web server remember to be security
minded. You will not only have proper control over your web content but also do your
Here we have specially compiled an Ultimate List of websites to look for Security
1. https://wordpress.org/news/category/security/
2. securityaffairs.co/
3. www.darkreading.com
4. www.cyberdefensemagazine.com/
5. blog.trendmicro.com/
6. https://blog.kaspersky.com/
7. www.symantec.com/connect/symantec-blogs/sr
8. https://www.techworm.net/
9. https://www.hackread.com/
10. http://www.securityweek.com/
11. https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/
12. http://krebsonsecurity.com/
13. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/
14. https://www.forbes.com/security/
15. https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/
Also available are security bulletins that contain important information about
1. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletins.aspx
2. https://helpx.adobe.com/security.html
3. https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/threat-advisories/index.jsp
4. http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.in/
5. https://www.us-cert.gov/
6. http://blog.azimuthsecurity.com/
7. https://www.qualys.com/research/security-advisories/
8. https://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/
9. https://www.alienvault.com/blogs
10. http://blog.fortinet.com/
11. http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.in/
12. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html
13. http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/
14. https://www.europol.europa.eu/latest_press_releases
15. http://www.coresecurity.com/grid/advisories
16. http://blog.cert.societegenerale.com/
17. http://blogs.cisco.com/security
18. http://www.isightpartners.com/blog/
How TemplateToaster helps?
is critical for site security and success. Developers can opt for a managed WordPress
including WordPress. Themes developed with TT are secure and as per WordPress
securely implemented themes to work with. You can stay assured that your WordPress
security will be further enhanced with the themes created using this tool.
7. Marketing and Monetisation of WordPress
Website
Would you like to boost traffic to your Website or Blog and even increase the amount of
people who read your content? Who wouldn't, you say! Today I will be introducing you
some useful strategies to pave this way in order to give you the possibility either to get
your website off the ground or become a trustworthy and successful blogger, as well.
The main goal of these methods is not just about quantity: we do sure want to uplift the
overall traffic but what is even more critical is to draw quality audience towards our
websites that mean a group of loyal people who is supposed to follow you on regular
7.1.1 Interviews
Getting in touch with great and acknowledged personalities in your field is a surefire way
to boost engagement. Even better if we want to attract brand new visitors, that may be
attracted and appealed to hear more from reliable authorities such as Influencers or
even by writing a tailored article. When it comes to the final step, let's try to hear your
audience's voice in order to make them feel fully involved: your guest will be answering
back to your follower's questions and he/she will quench their curiosity. This way, you
are going to strengthen your website's credibility, you will be gaining authority in your
niche market and, at the same time, it is very likely your web traffic will skyrocket! Once
you did it, it is time to spread the voice out: be sure to give the interview a ripple effect
by publishing throughout your Social Media and Newsletter. Besides, I do suggest you
to kindly ask your guest to do the same to maximize the whole outreach.
7.1.2 Infographics
Infographics are a stunning way to improve the shareability and coolness of your
content. Infographics are incredibly helpful when it comes to showcase statistics, facts
and figures in a way that won't get your audience sick and tired. Several researches have
proven that this kind of content is way more digestible for Web visitors since it is easier
to analyze and to keep in mind, rather than ordinary plain-texts. Even though the text is
still pivotal in any kind of communication, images are unquestionably quicker assimilated
in the brain than words. That's why the relentless rising of Infographic which may
process complex information into graphics that can be easily grasped and are easy on
the eyes!
So where's the catch? Timing and skills might hamper you from crafting outstanding
saving tools that allow you to manage to create fancy infographics: Canva, Visualize,
Tutorial or Podcast are another consistent way to steer valuable traffic to your web
domains. Other than simply getting more traffic, these tools are likely to persuade
people to stick around your pages for an average time way longer than the usual one,
Infographic. According to the matter, you deal with, you can leverage this tool by
recording step-by-step guide or tutorial in order to walk your audience through some
subject: very soon they will benchmark you as a dependable source of information to
look at when it comes to solving their issues or tackle their unsolved doubts. And your
To be fair, there are a couple of elements to point out. Tutorials are pretty manageable
be feasible in a relatively slim amount of time (of course you can always bring some
improvements the more you get familiar with the instrument). But if you are willing to
give the podcast a shot, it's pretty much different. Podcasting pays invaluable off but it
takes also a huge effort to a very large extent. A podcast is not a shot in the dark: you
can not schedule a one-off episode (it will end up to mislead and maybe disappoint your
audience) but you have to plan like a series of interrelated episodes, their format, and
length. So you have to be sure to own the necessary skill set, available staff and time to
invest in it. On top of all of this, podcasting may be costly: headphones, mixer, and
Keeping your eyes wide open on what is going on within your Social Network's profiles
is the best way to keep your authority and trustworthiness very high. An engaged
community is most of the time a very happy one! As a result, you will be getting much
more traffic to your website. The rule of thumb is to monitor what's happening on your
pages and keep track with the flow of the conversation: bring your expertise, do not
leave your follower's questions unanswered or unsolved and deliver them spot-on and
kind explanations. If you are going to keep a supportive and approachable attitude, you
will establish your website as a well-grounded reference point to count on for all of your
community. Try to listen, at least every now and then: an efficient way to build-up long-
lasting relationship with your followers is by letting their voice heard rather than
constantly pitching your products or exposing your standpoints. Ask them something,
try to lend your ears to them and, if possible, try to involve them completely by sharing
their content!
It is pretty superfluous to say but Youtube is an incredibly valid source of traffic that you
do not want to neglect. There are two most prominent reason to bolster this choice:
• First and foremost, the overall numbers are impressive: Youtube is overcrowded. It
is by far the second most used search engine of the world as well as the third
and ranked within the Google SERP, as well. Videos may even get ranked in the
Youtube is pretty much easy to be integrated with your Social Media channels. Plus, you
will be allowed to place some enticing Call-to-actions and tailored link within the
description box beneath the video: this way you can invite viewers to take a look at your
Keeping constantly your website (or blog) tidy and updated with fresh and top-notch
content is the best way to keep your community as close as possible. If you pop up
usually appreciate the usefulness of your contents may end up disappointed when they
sift through your web pages without finding anything new and relevant. Over the long
term, the frequency of your publishing schedule is going to positively affect your ranking
too: the more engaging content you will be releasing, the more likely you are going to
Unluckily, we are all aware that Facebook organic reach is tremendously plummeting.
The average exposure hovers over 5% of your entire community: let's be realistic, this
means that very few people will accidentally stumble upon your posts. This is why you
should ensure to allocate a small fragment of your budget to keep an “up and running”
campaign that features your fancy articles. Moreover, be sure to target the campaign to
the right people, namely the most likely to be interested in your core-business.
7.1.8 Take a break from your own niche market!
It is quite understandable that your efforts are mostly devoted to your own business and
niche-market: you spend your all day living it, breathing it in and working on it. On the
other side, it may affect your creativity: talking as a chatterbox about the same subjects
for months and months can also turn your audience off. Once in a while, it is fully
advisable to broaden your horizons by writing about something else, even completely
unrelated to your core business. This is a gorgeous way to spark your creativity and,
simultaneously, to blow up your follower's minds: let's talk about your passions, hobbies
or travels you experienced. You'll get plenty of insights just by browsing through many
other blogs. Aside from the main subject, you can give a new shade to your writing style
by varying your language, the article's typology, graphic's layout and so forth. This
variation is going to pay handsomely off and you will be obtaining a two-fold objective:
your usual readers will hugely appreciate it, they won't get bored and you will likely win
some other people's curiosity (especially the ones that are not fully dedicated to your
sector)
Contests are a stimulating way to create buzz around your Brand as well as to trigger
people's interest. You can openly challenge yourself by declaring that you are going to
achieve an objective by the end of a certain deadline. On the other hand, you can even
call your community's members out. A contest may be super fun and it can impressively
promote your Brand around the web through an unstoppable word of mouth! It's not all.
Launching a contest brings many other benefits along, mainly to create brand new
content. In fact, you can keep people updated about the challenge is going on, pictures
of the attendees, publish a post with the final outcomes, case studies on what you
learned during the challenge. Needless to say that updates will lose visibility and
importance when the challenge will be over but case-studies and follow-ups will become
Another trusted way to rise your website/blog visibility and, consequently, to gain a load
of traffic is Guest Blogging. The perks of Guest Blogging are essentially three and all of
By contrast, you can accept Guest Blogger on your pages too in order to save the time
you should spend by writing it. But be careful with your choice and be sure to host a
good quality and skilled author. Point out some clear and detailed guidelines to stick to,
otherwise, you will be spending the time you saved in writing by proofreading it!
The sun never sets on “User Generated Content”! In total frankness, this is not the
newest trick available on the Social Media Marketing but its effectiveness is yet
extraordinary. Your followers are not just numbers to show off but real human being. Of
course, you have to treat them both with respect and esteem but why can't you “hire”
them as your faithful allies for your Web Marketing strategy? There are countless ways
• Repurposing some of their Blog posts by giving them the whole credits.
• Asking them to post something specific (how they spend their weekend, where
they go on holiday, what are they going to eat on Thanksgiving just to name very
few).
This strategy is never-ending since followers are always keen and willing to share their
own experiences with their favorite Brand and to stay, even shortly, under the digital
spotlight.
Well, these are the most critical ways I am used to applying in order to drive massive
web traffic to my websites (and my client's ones). Though, I do have to stress once more
that driving traffic just for the sake of it is not pretty much worthy: the traffic
augmentation should be always come along with a stronger and broader community
engagement. The more you can delight your followers with worth-sharing content, they
more they will enjoy staying in touch with you and spreading the words all over to new
members. Finally, let me tell you that you need to put your mind on it: even doing all of
these things does not bring success and huge numbers overnight and all at once. You
need to be consistent with your work to gain your follower's trust and to be
acknowledged as a dependable authority to count on. So, enjoy it and buckle down!
newsletters, eBooks, SEO, pay-per-click ads, white papers, social media marketing, social
bookmarking, content marketing, and anything that can reach potential customers and
entice them to move through the sales funnel. Even blogs can be used as an inbound
marketing tactic, but what you are about to read talks about how to use inbound
marketing to encourage people to visit your blog so they can potentially be converted
into customers.
As for that sales funnel mentioned a few lines ago, it is a marketing system. It is the
customer experience that you intend for customers have as they move from being a
prospect to a lead and then a lead to a customer. After they become a customer, you
The purpose of inbound marketing is to make it easier for leads to find your website or
blog. This is important since you want them to know about you so they turn into a
customer. In other words, this form of marketing increases brand awareness. It can also
create a higher preference for your brand because you have entertained and interacted
with a potential customer before they have even thought about spending their money
with you. You can build trust with people before they are ready to buy, increasing the
chances that they will choose your product or service when they are ready. Sometimes,
you will grab the attention of someone who is ready to buy right that moment and they
Inbound marketing is also a way to gain more leads for less money. Being that inbound
marketing isn’t always an instant marketing solution, it is a long-term process that builds
over time. While this may seem like it will produce more frustration than anything, it can
be highly rewarding when you start seeing the results. Instead of pulling customers in
through traditional marketing methods that capture a potential customer’s attention for
a brief period, inbound marketing captures them for a much longer period of time. This
increases the chances of the customer becoming a repeat customer because it’s all
about building trust. Repeat business is the most profitable form of business.
So when leading leads to your blog, it is very important that you make sure the content
you are leading them to is something that will capture the trust that you need them to
Now that we’ve made it this far, it’s time to mention that sales funnel again because it’s a
great tool to use as a guide. First, imagine you have a funnel in front of you and you
1. At the top of the funnel, you are attracting people to your blog or website and
they are stepping inside. You don’t want them to climb out at this point. Instead,
you need them to keep moving through the funnel until they come out the
bottom as customers.
4. Learn from your leads and customers about what they want so you can keep
Then you want them to become repeat customers and you do this by giving them a
great buying experience and the continuance of your inbound marketing tactics.
The first thing you want to do is create a theme every month that you are going to focus
on. This is not a theme that surrounds a product or service, but something you have
found that interests your customers. In other words, you aren’t going to try to hard sell
them. Prospects aren’t big fans of the hard sell because it makes them feel pressured.
They want information before they want anything else. Giving them that will earn their
trust, but you are going to have to be consistent with this theme in order to capitalize on
that trust.
Secondly, any content that you produce will be based around that theme. You can write
one large blog post surrounding that theme so you can market that post throughout the
month. You can then supplement it with at least three or four shorter blog posts per
your chosen site (google, Facebook, Bing, Pandora, etc.), create a podcast, and/or have
visitors sign up for a newsletter. There are many elements you can integrate into your
theme-related activities.
Third, make sure you regularly post on your social media accounts. However, you don’t
want every post to be linked to your content or you are going to wear your audience out
and make them unfollow you. Have a variety of theme-related posts so you can maintain
the attention of your audience. This is especially important with Facebook since the more
recent algorithm changes focus on the quality of posts so users stay engaged. It isn’t so
much about the quantity. The average half-life of a Facebook post is 3.2 hours, so
Fourth, at the end of the first week, you want to analyze your results so you can tweak
the content you are delivering if necessary. There is a lot of trial and error, but you learn
from it. By using a tool, such as Google Analytics, you can see how certain pieces of
content are performing, the amount of traffic being drawn in, where the traffic is coming
from, which pages visitors are leaving the most, and much more.
Lastly, you can use an editorial calendar to make all of this easier for you. This is a tool
that is used by bloggers and businesses to keep track of and control the content they
post across the Internet. You can use it to brainstorm content ideas and where to publish
them. You can pinpoint when content is going to be published, as well as use it to assign
certain topics to anyone writing your content for you. There is actually a WordPress
Plugin called “Editorial Calendar” that will allow you to easily manage your entire blog.
As you can see, inbound marketing is an effective tactic. It is one that is used every day
by marketers to produce higher quality traffic to their websites and blogs. Many times,
the blog is the recipient of the most traffic because it is the blog content that can build
trust in the brand. Just make sure you remember the sales funnel and the five steps
outlined above so that you can build a solid inbound marketing plan that will make you
more profitable.
The time of wondering has passed. Read the ultimate guide to Monetize WordPress
Over the years, webmasters have realised that the reach of the Internet is not limited to
expanding reach of the Internet have allowed webmasters to monetize their blogs,
aiming to set up businesses that focus on yielding results without having to use, sell or
provide tangible products in the market. With some simple tips and focus on the right
strategies, you will have the answer to the age old question - How to Monetize
WordPress Blog? This post aims to help you understand the fundamental basis of
monetizing a WordPress blog, and we hope that the monetization strategies and tips
discussed here encourage you to take necessary steps to make a few extra bucks without
Simply put, monetization is converting an asset or object into money. Creating a website
or writing on a blog have always been popular on the Internet. However, earning a profit
from them requires knowledge and things that need to be considered. First and
foremost you will have to begin by choosing a niche which you will want to publish and
keep for a long time. It is important to consider interests and popular subjects of
audiences you wish to target while choosing a niche. It is also very important to do a
choosing a professional designing and optimising system, you can start promoting your
blog, and on learning how to monetize WordPress blog you can start using effective
ways to start making money! Here are some good ways to start making money with your
WordPress blog.
The first thing required when you publish your WordPress blog is that you understand
what SEO is. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process used to maximise the
number of visitors that arrive on your WordPress blog or your website. This ensures that
when someone searches a particular term, your blog is ranked up, increasing your
chance of getting more visitors. Search engines love quality, relevant, interesting and
fresh content. But, there are other factors also which you need to take into account for
A blog post needs to be indexed, and backlinks should be present to improve its rank for
a targeted keyword. Optimising content can be quite difficult but it is the key to
monetization. The tips listed below can be used by you to optimise your WordPress blog
to maximise results.
The most important tip you can use is to optimise the Pages Link Structure. In most
you’re looking to attract more people to the web page, the structure can be changed to
settings of the arbitrary structure, and enter the title of the post.
The titles that you choose for your pages and posts, should be written from the point of
view of your audience. You need to start thinking from the perspective of your audience
who could be a reader or buyer. Using keyword tools like Google AdWords to search for
There is always a text file available in the root directory of your WordPress blog. This file
has all the special instructions search engines look for such that when a search engine
spider visits your WordPress blog, it checks the file in the root directory first to make
sure whether certain files are restricted or unrestricted. Therefore, you should not ignore
Robot.txt as the spiders act according to the instructions they find there.
Install Plugins
XML Sitemaps
If you wish to make a profit from your WordPress blog, installing a Google XML Sitemap
plugin could do wonders. This plugin generates XML sitemaps for search engines like
Yahoo, Bing and Google. On adding this plugin, your blog will automatically get indexed,
thus improving your search engine rankings. Here is a list of absolute XML sitemap
Akismet Plugin
You can secure your blog from spammers by installing an anti-spam Akismet plugin. An
Indexing your blog as mentioned earlier, is important. You can easily index your
WordPress blog by informing search engine crawlers that you have made an update. On
installing different ping services, you can notify popular search engines of the changes
you have made. By doing this, you will significantly increase your indexing process.
In order to ensure that readers can navigate your blog without any issues, you should
The best way to link building is by interlinking articles on your WordPress blog. By using
many different automatic interlink plugins you can ensure that articles in your blog are
An easy way to let spiders understand what the image you have posted is about, you can
use the ALT attribute. Spiders usually read ALT attribute and the image name, therefore if
you have good ALT text and keywords in images, you will get a big SEO advantage.
These simple SEO tips will help you in optimising your WordPress blog such that you get
maximum visitors. Once you start receiving visitors, the next step would be to monetize
your WordPress blog. Listed below are ways which can help you make money, easily!
Broadly divided into two categories, monetization of a WordPress blog can be done with
attract target audience to click on said ads. This simplest form of monetization is further
Pay-Per-Click
An easy way to make money on your WordPress blog is the feature of Pay-Per-Click.
There are several companies who look for popular blogs that seem relevant to their
products or services. These companies place their advertisements on your blog and pay
you anytime a visitor clicks the advertisement. Most of the time, you will be offered a
commission if a visitor of your blog, buys their product. Alternatively, you can tap into
system which allows bloggers to tap into Google’s huge network. On signing up, Google
will place a simple code on your WordPress blog, which will identify content and start
displaying relevant advertisements. You will get paid-per-click for this as well.
CPM Ads
Another commonly used feature to make money via blog is through Cost per Thousand
Page Impressions. For example, if your blog generates 10,000 views on a monthly basis,
then if you choose to display a banner advertisement, then a standard $1 CPM, can earn
Monetizing a blog isn’t limited to persuading the target audience to click on ads. A lot of
other strategies can help you use simple mediums and approaches to generate money
from a blog or website. In fact, most webmasters focus on these long-term approaches
to generate money and yield results. Some of the most common ways to monetizing a
Product Reviews
Companies are always on the lookout for bloggers who can write product reviews for a
basic fee. If you are aware of a company which has a similar niche as your WordPress
blog, you can promote or even sell its products on your blog. This would generate more
Affiliate Marketing
One of the best strategize to monetize your blog is to give Affiliate Marketing a try.
Although this type of marketing doesn’t generate a high revenue, it helps a blogger
generate a steady income. All you have to do is, add links to affiliate products on your
blog. You can tap into markets like Amazon, JVZoo and ClickBank to find items that may
Sell an Ebook
If you know that your audience loves the content you write, you can sell it at a price.
Compile a collection of your best blog posts, or write your own Ebook and earn royalties
from sales. Alternatively, you can sell premium content, aka, you can show only part of
an article and for the complete version your audience must pay an amount to gain
complete access.
If your user starts signing up or subscribing to your WordPress blog, you can get a list of
email IDs of people that tend to follow your niche. You can then share these email IDs
with companies, who would happily pay you for new leads that may be interested in
their services.
You can make quick money by selling your blog. Although not recommended, it is one
way that you can create, sell and re-create. This is for people who are good at creating
As 2017 turns, even more people towards the digital world, it is important to have a
strategy that doesn’t fail. This can happen only if you have more than one strategy
leading to monetization. Listed below are 4 types of plugins, which can easily be
installed on your WordPress blog and will help you generate more money.
Comment Monetization
You can monetize the comments that you receive by using a simple plugin named
Vuukle. Devised to monetize the comments section on your blog, Vuukle gives you the
option to get revenue. It lowers the bounce rate, increases engagement time, gives
additional income through its ads and all in all increases the number of comments your
blog receives.
Bitcoin Donation
However, all is not yet lost. You can install a plugin named Block Ads to Bitcoin and turn
ads into bitcoins anytime users have Adblock enabled. This plugin allows bloggers to
You can use interstitial ads if you do not wish to inject any popup windows or banner
ads into your WordPress blog. On installing a plugin named, Clk.im ad network, which
deals mainly with links. Once you get started, you can configure it by copy-pasting your
public API key, available at registration. This would not bother your visitors, and you will
Content Recommendations
You can generate direct revenue by recommending high quality sponsored content
installing a plugin named Taboola,which would display content from Taboola on your
app widgets.
Content Monetization
Another way to get thousands of visitors to your site such that you can use all the
your WordPress blog. Following a few factors will ensure that the content you have is the
content people wish to read. The first factor is to keep in mind the audience, the second
is to publish quality content which is original and grammatically correct. The third is the
key, which is keeping your article short and to the point. The fourth is to add links
wherever necessary and last but not the least is to keep the various mentioned SEO
Monetizing a WordPress blog can more often that not be a hectic task. However, it
doesn’t always have to be. You can simply download a third party tool like
TemplateToaster which lets you place ads and plugins anywhere on your blog without
TemplateToaster, you can simply skip the steps of looking for plugins and design your
own custom theme, with sliders, banners and ad placements that you like and that do
So we’ve talked about SEO and different monetization techniques. Problem is that there
are so many techniques that one will get flustered choosing the best and right one.
However, it is not as daunting as it may look. The first thing that you must always keep in
mind is to focus your energies on creating your own niche and then going about
Nonetheless, we must mentions which strategy we think is best. Since the advent of ad
blockers, an ideal scenario would be to first optimise the blog with SEO factors and
publish quality content. Once that is done, add plugins such as Vuukle and Clik.im along
with Google AdSense or download TemplateToaster and design everything as you would
like!
WordPress. However, still there is a lot more to explore and learn in this well-featured
open source publishing platform. Here in this article, we have listed the top 8 hidden
features (which are actually not hidden, but you folks may be unaware) of WordPress
which are pretty useful. Bookmark it or jot down the following features in your notepad.
This option is available at the top right corner of the dashboard, just below the Admin
area. This drop down panel allows you to hide or show different things on a particular
page. For example, when you are on the dashboard, you can show or hide at a glance,
activity, quick draft and other options available there just by checking the
corresponding check-box. Similarly, when you are in the post section, by dropping down
the screen option, you can show or hide author, categories, tags, comments, dates and
other options by checking the respective check-box. It also allows the user to set a fixed
WordPress for providing a feature called sticky post. You can follow these steps to make
1. Click on the Posts and select the post you want to make sticky.
4. Click on Public and check the checkbox corresponding to the 'Stick this post to the
front page'.
5. Click on Update and visit your website.Now, that post will be sticked at the top of the
web page.
3. Add <!--nextpage--> tag in the content from where you want to split the article.
4. Click Update and then click on Preview Changes to see the changes.
Now, you can navigate to any page by clicking on the links provided below the post.
Note: This tag works only in the text mode. If you add this tag when the editor is in the
you can find its all revisions or copies stored in the database. WordPress also provides
you with the provision to restore revisions and compare two revisions.
2. Click on the 'Restore This Version' button at the top right corner of the post.
8.4.2 Comparing two Revisions
A slider is provided just above the post for the comparison of two revisions. New content
added is highlighted in green color and content deleted is highlighted in red color.
For every change you made in a page or post, by default a new revision is stored in the
database which can adversely affect the performance of the database and website. Now,
this can be avoided either by limiting the number of revisions, disabling revisions or
deleting revisions.
To set the limit, login to cPanel, select cPanel File Manager Code Editor and open wp-
Here, 3 is the number of revisions you want WordPress to keep in the database.
You can also install Better Delete Revision plugin to delete all reversions saved in the
database.
want to publish and schedule it. WordPress will automatically publish it in the future. To
schedule a post:
2. In the Publish metabox at the right side of the editor window, click on Edit below
Published on.
5. Click Schedule.
which can sidetrack the writer. This is where you can take advantage of full screen mode.
By clicking on the Toggle Full Screen button (At the top right corner of the editor
window) or pressing 'Alt+Shift+G', you can hide everything that distracts you.
8.7 Formatting Removal
After writing your content in editors like MS Word, when you copy it in the WordPress
editor, it is copied in the same formatting and style. However, you can remove any
comments, posts, pages and other data. For importing data from Blogger, Bigroll,
LiveJournal, RSS, Tumbler and other systems, required importers for these systems must
be installed in the WordPress. In the export option, you can export all content, posts or
pages. Once you click Download Export File, an XML file is created and downloaded in
your computer. This file can be imported in some other WordPress installation. This XML
file containing the content of the site is called as WordPress Extended RSS or WXR.
Import
Export
Final Words
These amazing features are definitively going to save your time and efforts in writing
and publishing your content using WordPress. Don't forget to share and write your views
about the article in comment section. Your comments value a lot for us.
9. Additional Resources
Images are very important for a website to gain and retain the attention of the users.
Without them, a website seems dull. On the other side of the benefits of images, they
make web pages heavy, thereby the load time of web pages get increased. The load time
is a decisive factor in search engine ranking, which broadly depends on the weight of the
page and the number of HTTP requests made to the server. Some more factors are also
there behind page speed, though. In our last post, we have provided some simple tips
to speed up a website. One of those is to use optimized images on the website. The
optimized images take less space as well as less bandwidth. Hence, the website takes
The photographs taken with modern high quality cameras come with high definition (big
image files), which are not suitable to use on the web pages as it is. Compression makes
the image file size reduced, hence, optimized for website. Following we are telling you
about 5 image compression tools that compress images without diminishing their visual
quality.
Compatible with windows, this is a free and open source image compressor. You can
compress PNG, JPG, JPEG and BMP images. It provides the flexibility to choose the
compression level for your images. In case, you are not sure that what compression level
is good for your images, you can see compression results of choosing different
compression levels. Plus, it gives the comparison preview of originally uploaded and
compressed images. The caesium will also let you know that how much space you've
This tool is specialist of optimizing PNG files and is available for windows. It is also
suitable to convert GIF, JPG, TIFF and BMP image files into PNG format. To get the
possible smallest PNG images, it unites PNGOUT, OptiPNG and DeflOpt techniques. A
very simple tool to use, it has not many options for setting preferences. You simply load
the images for compression, and see the original and compressed size of your images
Yet another PNG image optimizer on our list is PSYDK's PngOptimizer. This application
significantly reduces the weight of PNG files to make them able to download at fast
speed. Even, it can optimize animated PNGs. It can also convert BMP, GIF and TGA
images into PNG images. This application is available in two variations: Windows x64 (64
4. RIOT
Radical Image Optimization Tool (RIOT) can optimize your JPEG, GIF, and PNG files. It
gives flexibility to upload files in batch mode. It will let you determine the number of
colors, contrast, brightness, gamma, invert and metadata settings for the images you
want to compress. Hence, it is up to you whether you want to keep or want to stripe the
comments, IPTC, Adobe XMP, EXIF profile, and ICC profile from your image(s). The
common tools like pan, zoom, rotate and flip are also found in its interface. With this
tool, you can resize your images as well. For this, it supports different filters like
The File Optimizer can compress almost any file format. It has a simple interface, in
which you can add files simply by dragging. In the columnar format, you can view
original and compressed file sizes with relative percentage size of compressed image.
For reducing the file weight, it removes unnecessary metadata and other information.
One way to pick a tool is to compare the options you can avail from each tool. Another
is to compare the size and quality of compressed images obtained from each one. Let us
make the first task easier for you. So, as per number of options and control over
compression, the Caesium and the RIOT are go to applications. Both give more
compression settings. As per quality of compressed images, all tools are worthwhile.
Have you already worked with any of these tools? Chime in your thoughts about that.
You can also tell us if you use some other worthwhile application for image compression.
There are many popular websites that provide high quality paid images but every
blogger may not afford paying license fee to get images for each of its blog post. So, to
their help, we have put together some great resources to obtain high quality free
images. Before start, we want to let you know that the high quality images not only add
the grace and elegance to your blog post, but also add the weight to the web page. So,
you should always optimize them before using on the post. In earlier post, we have
described some free tools to optimize images without losing their visual quality. You
Let us get back to the topic now, and here you go with the free image resources.
1. Pixabay
The Pixabay is a very large website to get free images. All the images on Pixabay are
released under Creative Commons Zero(CC0) license. That means, you can use the
images without attribution. You can also modify the images as suitable for your purpose.
The images are of high quality. The Pixabay provides every detail of the image such as
time of upload, views, downloads, and the specifications of the camera. You are also
given the option to choose the size of the image while downloading.
2. DesignersPics.com
Another source of high resolution images is DesignersPics.com. From here you can find
free images for business blogs, nature blogs, food and drink blogs, technology blogs,
wild life and miscellaneous things. To use the images downloaded from here, attribution
is not required.
3. IM FREE
IM FREE has a wide range of high quality photographs, available under creative
commons license. You will have to attribute to the creator of the photograph for using it
in your blog post. While downloading the image, you are given the options to choose
4. SplitShire
You can download Abstract, Animals, Automotive, Fashion, Interiors, Nature, People,
Landscape, Technology, Wedding, blurry background, low poly background, street, and
some miscellaneous images from the SplitShire. To use the images downloaded from
From 16 categories, you can download as many images as you want, for free. STOKPIC's
photographs can be used without attribution. Since, there are more than a dozen of
categories, you can probably fulfill all the photographic needs of your WordPress blog.
6. GRATISOGRAPHY
GRATISOGRAPHY provides high quality images. Their collection is very cool and
awesome. A half dozen categories are there on this website to browse the photographs
in. Though, all photographs are great, those of Whimsical category are truly amusing.
This site gets new pictures added every week. No attribution is required to use
GRATISOGRAPHY's images.
7. PICOGRAPHY
You can search images using tags from the PICOGRAPHY. With every high resolution
image, the details as to camera and the place where shot has been taken are also given.
downloading the images of your like, you can leave your remarks for the photographer
as well. This website is however not as big as above ones but, provides fantastic images.
8. Magdeleine
The Magdeleine provides nice search ability to the users. On the site, you can find nature
photographs, City and Architecture images, Tech images, Objects and Abstract images,
Animals and People images, Food images. For searching images, color filters and tags
can be used. Some Magdeleine's images are licensed under CC0-public domain. While,
The PhotoPin offers a huge collection of images to download for free. You will have to
include attribution in the end of the blog post, if you use an image from PhotoPin. You
can find images for almost any niche from this website.
JAY MANTRI's photographs are scenic. Nature, abstract, buildings, and travel
photographs are available for free download. No attribution is required. You can use the
photographs as you want. Moreover, you can modify the photographs, if doing so is
This is a very big website providing unlimited free images. You can find images related to
every subject you can imagine. To download the free images from this website, you are
required to create an account. After that you can download illimitable images.
12. FREEIMAGES
A superabundant quantity of photographs is there on this website. More than two dozen
categories consist more than 388 thousand photographs and illustrations. The categories
cover Animals & Wildlife, Business & Finance, Industry, Architecture, Celebrities, Fashion
and Beauty, Sports & Fitness, Automotive, Textures & Patterns, Movie & Music, and
more. You can search free images using tags as well. Attribution is required for using the
images.
13. Unsplash
Though, categories are not there, a search bar has been given on the top right corner of
the website to search the images. You can download and use free images got from
Unsplash as per Creative Commons Zero license terms. So, you are not required to
14. Picjumbo
As the name speaks, Picjumbo is a jumbo website offering free images. From here, you
can find high resolution free images for Technology, Business, Food, Fashion, Nature and
Architecture blogs.
15. Life Of Pix
The look and feel of this website is similar with Unsplash. The website is comparatively
small, but the photographs it offers are worthwhile. You can find photographs of sea,
birds, castle, flowers, nature, city, and of some miscellaneous niches from this website.
16. Freepik
The very last free image resource is Freepik. The Freepik works as an engine, which
crawls many websites to find the free images. Therefore, it provides us free images by
different websites, most of which we've covered above. To use the free images
1. LibreShot
2. Morguefile
functionality and a stronger focus on design; morguefile.com has created a unique and
Wrapping it Up
We think that these websites are enough for you to find the suitable images for your
blog posts. Almost zero probability is there that you don't find images perfectly suitable
for your posts. In fact, most of the image source websites allow modifying the images
too. So, if you do not find the original image suitable for your blog post, you can modify
it to make suitable.